Thursday, January 3, 2019

Welcome Author Charley Descoteaux

Hello and Happy New Year! Thanks for having me, Dawn,
it’s wonderful to be here!

I love music and have been to a lot of live shows so
it was fun re-visiting some of my favorites to make this list, even if it was hard
to choose only five. I tend to group my concert experiences into “Blow Off Steam”
such as Slipknot and Five Finger Death Punch, and “Bucket List” which, so far,
is topped by seeing Itzak Perlman at the Schnitz. But overall, here are my Top
5 Concerts, in no particular order.

1.Black
Sabbath—the reunion of all the original members (yes, even Bill Ward on drums)
at the Ozzfest 10th Anniversary. They blew me away, even when
Ozzie’s voice cut out in the middle of a song. It was surreal, at first I
thought his mic had quit but then he ran offstage so we knew something was
wrong. When he returned he apologized for messing up the song, even though the
band kept playing through it all & it sounded amazing even without vocals.

2.Stone
Temple Pilots in a small venue in Central Oregon. I had a front row ticket and
loved the hell out of this show. Scott didn’t wear a dress (he only wore one
outfit the whole time, in fact) but he was his raucous self and the music was mind-blowing.

3.Against
Me! This was in the summer of 2018. It had been a long time since I went to an
all-day outdoor concert so it would have been fun even if I hadn’t seen this
band. The headliners were The Offspring—and I’ve loved them since Smash in 1994
& saw them in the early aughts—but in my opinion Against Me! stole this
show. It’s rare for a band to be better live than on their recordings, but they
truly are. The sheer energy of their performance would have been enough to win
me over, but they were so tight—it’s no wonder their merch sold out literally
minutes after they left the stage. I hope to have the chance to see them
headline someday.

4.The
Experience Hendrix Project. This show was spectacular—so many great musicians
came together to perform some of my favorite songs of all time. It was a
privilege to see Buddy Guy play—even in his 80s he doesn’t miss a trick. The performances
of so many legendary guitarists all in one place still makes my heart beat fast
when I think about it. My favorites (in addition to Guy) were Mato Nanji (Indigenous)
and Zakk Wylde. I would recommend this traveling show to anyone who digs
guitars and/or Hendrix.

5.Alice
in Chains. I’ve seen them more than any other band but, sadly, not while Layne
Staley was still alive. Alice is my favorite band (okay, they’re tied with Led
Zeppelin) so I’ve travelled out of state to see them and stood all day in cow
pastures to see them, and would probably do it again. They’ve donated so much
time and energy to raise money for charities—which is how I got to meet them at
a benefit for the Seattle Children’s Hospital. That’s the concert on this
list—Alice in Chains with Heart and the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall. I’ll
never forget the sheer joy of that night.

How about you? What was your favorite concert? Join
the conversation in the comments and enter my Rafflecopter for chance to win an
Amazon gift card!

While you’re thinking about your favorite concerts,
here’s an excerpt from Always Forward!
Never Straight that takes place at the Portland Rock and Roll Marathon.

Baxter Bryan is the nerdy half of BaxCo, a start-up in
Portland’s Silicon Forest creating cutting-edge high-tech toys. He’s also a
hermit. When BaxCo sponsors the Portland Rock and Roll Half Marathon, Bryan
decides to break out of his comfort zone and do more than listen to the music
with a beer in hand. The race has barely started when he bumps into a fit,
handsome man, causing sparks to fly. But the long hours needed to make BaxCo a
success aren’t the only reason Bryan spends most of his time alone in his
apartment.

Cay Nissen runs every day to stay in shape. He would
love to run away from his job in a Silicon Forest cube farm, but keeps
returning to support his teenaged daughter. His true love is music. Cay writes
songs for the band he helped form in high school but doesn’t see any way to turn
music into a career. The half marathon seemed like a decent way to pass a
Saturday, make his boss happy, and catch a performance of his old band all at
the same time. When he meets a man who sparks his interest, the safety of his
cubicle isn’t the only part of his life that’s in jeopardy of changing.

Sponsors got to park in a special lot, so once I
navigated the traffic—thick even
by Portland standards for a Saturday morning—it wasn’t much of a walk to get to
the starting line. The usual crowd had gathered: serious runners who looked
like a half marathon would be a cakewalk, slightly doughy folks like me who
seemed as spooked as I felt, and people wearing regular street clothes, whose
plan aligned with what mine would have been a year ago—listening to the music
and avoiding the exercise portion of the day.

Children ran aroundlaughing, wearing new and often matching running
gear. No teenagers I could see, which was disappointing. Teenagers were an
untapped demographic for my—or rather,
BaxCo’s—drone butler, Alfred. His main function was to patrol the perimeter of
a property, but he could hover over
a pot of boiling water or watch a driveway for parents to arrive if that’s what
you needed him to do. Alfred could watch justabout anything you didn’t have time to
watch yourself.

Ugh,
I’m playing BaxCo’s YouTube commercials in my head; that’s gotta be a new low.

I walked along the race course to the first stage,
where my sponsorship dollars proudly proclaimed that BaxCo cared about the environment.

We didn’t draw the best location, but maybe that
wouldn’t matter. Some of the crowd had come for the music and not the
exercise—hopefully they would spend enough time at the first stage to recycle
something. The green and black logo had been designed for optimal marketing
impact—brand recognition—it was boring and generic and, in my opinion, didn’t
say anything at all. I caught the negativity of my internal monologue and
resolved not to think about BaxCo for the rest of the day. While I stood there,
bemoaning the placement of three glorified garbage cans with the company’s
logo, the race started.

After the serious runners passed me, I began to run.
Okay, jog. I intended to make a real effort to participate in the race. I’d
trained and psyched myself up
for weeks—promotional opportunity aside. I casually scoped all the runners, not
actually looking for anyone, content to do some people-watching. I snickered at
myself because secretly I hoped to hook up with one of the men blowing past me,
to have their slender, muscled bodies pressed against mine, their lung capacity
put to good use—

I almost
swallowed my tongue when a tall, striking man pulled up alongside me. His arm
brushed against mine, and even
though skin didn’t touch skin—he wore a long-sleeved shirt, no doubt a
technologically advanced fiber meant to wick the sweat away from his skin,
probably as it gave him a massage and helped combat climate change—I felt an
electric shock at the contact. It actually crackled.

He turned, one eyebrow raised, and smiled. “Did you
feel that?”

“Um, yeah.” I tried to keep up, even though men like him—svelte athletic
types who can pull off trendy shaved-on-the-side-and-longer-on-top
haircuts—didn’t usually notice plain, out-of-shape nerds like me.

Charley Descoteaux is the author of the Buchanan House
Love Stories. Book One was a USA Today Must-Read Romance.

Charley has always heard voices. She was relieved to
learn they were fictional characters, and started writing when they insisted
daydreaming just wasn’t good enough. In exchange, they’ve agreed to let her
sleep once in a while. Charley has survived earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods,
but couldn’t make it through a single day without stories.